Costa Rica (inglés) (Lonely Planet) Paperback – October 25, 2012

For the price, you might as well buy this book if you're headed to Costa Rica. I will admit I did not use it much while I was there, however, there were a few times that it CERTAINLY came in handy. When a bus drops you off in a town you've never been in, it's nice to have not only a review of all the local hotels and hostels, but a map showing where each one is located AND the price. Easy to read, has multiple itineraries and multiple perspectives. It's not censored or limited to any politically correct subject matter. For example: the book is not shy about warning/noting possible visitors to Jacó about the prevalence of prostitution in that city. Has relevant info for pretty much any type of traveler.

The book is typical for a country guide, but we didn't use it much because our tour was prearranged. We wouldn't go to a country for the first time without such a guide and this one for Costa Rica served our purpose.

This book was a great help on my trip to Costa Rica. I spent a week on a yoga retreat in Mal Pais, but I used the book to plan the second week of my trip. I always like LP's books, and this was no exception: great recommendations on hotels, transportation, activities, restaurants...I definitely recommend this guide if you're going to Costa Rica (and I highly recommend Costa Rica too, it is a beautiful & amazing country - as a woman traveling alone, I always felt safe, and everyone I met was very friendly, and kindly helped me with my terrible Spanish! Just don't stand on a street corner like a dummy with your huge camera & guidebook out, or else the panhandlers will accost you! I saw this happening to other tourists!)

This was heads and shoulders above the other guides we purchased. We saw tons of folks around the country that were using the same guide, and the reaction was pretty universal - this is the best written, best organized, and easiest to read guide for when you need info in a new country. At one point we were a bit lost (my fault) and the guide helped us track down a wifi connection so we could get back on our way. Highly, highly recommend.

I'm thankful for Lonely Planet which is one of the books I use to research potential travel. But this book in Kindle format is tough to navigate. It worked for me because I had already read sections of the printed library book before my trip, and any time I wanted to look something up, I already knew roughly where to look - and the search function wasn't easy to use. Content was useful but not always accurate, especially the estimated times/distances between locations. It was a good primer but I got most of my relevant info from Costa Ricans as I went about my trip.

We looked at all of the major guidebooks for Costa Rica (checked them out from the library) and the Lonely Planet guide was by far the best in our opinion. All of the guidebooks cover pretty much the same things, but this guide gave far more practical basic information and a much wider range of options for food and lodging. We used an older version of the guide on our previous trip to Costa Rica, but thought we would look at other possibilities. We needn't have done so; the new edition is still better than any other guides out there. The maps could have been better, but we hadn't planned on relying on them and had already purchased excellent maps from another source.

Buy the printed version if you want the Lonely Planet experience - the Kindle version is more frustration than it is worth.I am a long time user of the Lonely Planet guidebooks and have generally been very happy with their products but this was a very poor effort by a once reliable source of travel information. The Kindle format has such great potential to increase the usability and accessibility of information for a travel guide but this ebook failed on three main points.1. The Kindle version of the book was little more than a straight transfer of the printed book. That may sound good but the printed book has two pages facing each other whereas the ebook is limited to a one page view. This meant that interesting side-bars, maps, graphics, etc. Lonely Planet is famous for now brakes up the text and makes it hard to follow the information presented because it was no longer in a logical order. Mid-paragraph you are suddenly interrupted by these extra items and then 2 (or more) pages later the text picks up where it left off before the extra material. Simple editing of the text to fit an ebook format rather than a page for page copy would have made this book much easier to read and use.2. The maps, graphs and most importantly the glossary are all straight photocopies and can not be adjusted in size. This means that on a normal Kindle (2012 Paperwhite version) these things are illegible. Retyping the language section is a small task and would have made my trip much easier. Making the maps zoomable also would have helped immensely.3. Navigation of the ebook was incredibly difficult. The chapter guide and table of contents were woefully inadequate and the index is completely gone (no internal hot links, no list of topics, nothing)! So if you are using the Kindle version to find what is interesting in the country your only hope is to read it from front to back...because skipping around to the parts of the country you are most interested in is nearly impossible with the chapter guide. Entire regions of the country were not listed and could only be found by using the text search on the Kindle. This meant that you had to search for a city within the region and then backtrack page by page to find the neighboring towns or a simple region overview. Since this information is typically something that Lonely Planet normally excels at then why do they make it extra difficult to find?I know I said there were three things I didn't like about this version of the book but one final thing also really annoyed me: The internet hyperlinks are everywhere! Again this also sounds great...if you are sitting at home planning your trip but you will find these pages filled with links really annoying when you are on the streets of San Jose trying to find your hotel. Every time you try to touch the screen to turn a page it wants to open a browser, but since you are in a foreign country you don't have on-demand internet everywhere!I would recommend that if you like the Lonely Planet experience then simply buy the printed version of the book. When you can find the appropriate text within the Kindle version it is usually up to the LP standards and can be helpful, but finding the right text is a crap shoot. Some of the information in the printed version may be out of date for some places but it is much more accessible and user friendly. The company hasn't really made any of the efforts necessary for an effective ebook version of their guide so don't waste your time on a substandard product.

Lonely Planet is one of the main guides around the world and in Costa Rica. It is perhaps a little more focused on budget travel and out-of-the-way locations, but overall it's just a basic tour book, a good one.